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A longitudinal study of novice primary school teachers’ knowledge and quality of mathematics instruction

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Abstract

Little is known about the relationship between knowledge and instructional quality of novice primary school teachers during their first 3 years of teaching mathematics. This study utilizes the Classroom video analysis and the Mathematical quality of instruction to examine changes in beginning teachers’ usable knowledge and instructional quality, respectively, and their relationship in each year. The analyses reveal positive associations between knowledge and instructional quality in the second and third year of teaching. Two case study teachers illustrate the tight link between knowledge and practice and how different school contexts provide contrasting opportunities to learn from practice, thus contributing to the different patterns of knowledge and instructional quality over time. The findings suggest that usable knowledge of student mathematical thinking at the beginning of the profession supports teacher improvement in both knowledge and practice over time if the vision of the school context is aligned with student-centered instruction.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (REESE program) under Grant DRL-0953038. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agency. A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2018 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York, NY, USA. The authors thank the teachers for their participation and for opening their classroom doors and making their instruction public. They are also grateful to Janet Mercado and Cathery Yeh who assisted with data collection and organization; to Rosalind Alicia Ball who scored lesson videos for inter-rater reliability; and to several undergraduate research assistants who completed lesson transcriptions.

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  1. School of Education, University of California, Irvine, 3200 Education Building, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    Jiwon Lee & Rossella Santagata

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  1. Jiwon Lee
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  2. Rossella Santagata
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Correspondence to Jiwon Lee.

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Lee, J., Santagata, R. A longitudinal study of novice primary school teachers’ knowledge and quality of mathematics instruction. ZDM Mathematics Education 52, 295–309 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-019-01123-y

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